The invention relates to the technical sector of apparatus for dispensing cellulose wadding, creped paper towels and towels of similar materials, especially those used for wiping the user's hands, toilet paper and paper napkins.
It is known in the trade that numerous manufacturers, producers and the present applicant in particular offer dispensing apparatus for paper hand wipes with or without automatic cutting of the paper in folded and non-folded form.
Generally, each apparatus comprises a housing devised to accommodate, in its upper part, a reel of wipe material rotatably mounted and guided so that it is unwound by the user manually pulling the end of the strip of paper in order to ensure, thanks to an underneath cutting device incorporated in a drive drum, the dispensing of a cut length of paper.
The above-mentioned reel of wipe material is generally wound on a hollow core that fits into end pieces or similar shapes made on the lateral flanges of the housing. These flanges are elastic enough to be pushed apart in order to fit the reel or remove the core once said reel has been completely used up. Such a mounting arrangement is described in a large number of patents filed on the behalf of the applicant, such as, merely by way of example, French Patents No. 93/04082, No. 93/14609, No. 94/04399, No. 94/06907 and No. 94/05698. The apparatus described in these various patents demonstrate the above-mentioned loading system regardless whether or not the apparatus is designed to allow the dispensing of paper in folded or non-folded form.
In the above-mentioned implementations, the reel of wipe material does not rest directly on the underneath drum which includes the device for cutting strips of material; this cutting device may, for example and merely by way of example, be that stated in the Applicant's above-mentioned French Patents.
A pressure component which is in elastic contact with the drum is used to ensure transport and retention of the strip of paper as it is unwound.
The concept of producing slide-shaped elements that allow vertical guidance and dropping of the reel of wipe material due to the effect of gravity as the reel is gradually unwound is also known in other apparatus. In this case the lateral ends of the reel have caps with a pin that engages in said slides.
In the above-mentioned types of apparatus, it has been observed that the operator has to perform a manual action in order to position the reel of wipe material either by pushing the lateral flanges apart and inserting the core into the end pieces or by positioning the reel in the guide slides by means of studs or pins that protrude from the reel.
In these implementations and, in particular, in order to position the reel between the flanges, the operator has to tentatively locate and position the reel extremely precisely on the end pieces, an operation which is not always practical. The diameter of the end pieces essentially matches the diameter of the core in order to ensure adequate strength of the assembly.
In addition, it has been observed that it is necessary that the reel that is in use must have been completely unwound in order to change the reel of wipe material otherwise material wipes could be wasted.
As part of the Applicant's previous research, the latter has envisaged the possibility of removing the used up reel of wipe material when there was still a few strips of paper to be dispensed in order to automatically replace it by a new reel of material, a so-called spare reel. In this embodiment, complex mechanisms making use of swivelling lever arm or connecting rod systems were used and made the design of the apparatus expensive. On the other hand, this arrangement made it possible to dispense the entire first reel of wipe material at the same time as unwinding of the second reel in use started as defined, for instance, in French Patents No. 83/19815 and No. 76/28387. In the latter case, the final empty core containing no material was then removed from the bottom of the apparatus and an operator could subsequently remove it in order to reload the apparatus.